


Donna and the Case of the Haunted Cabin

by whichstiel



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Donna's first solo case, Gen, Ghosts, Minnesota, Wayward Daughters, Wayward Daughters Femslash Big Bang, Werewolves, creepy cabins in the middle of nowhere, it's a doozy, wdfemslashbigbang, wholesome kayaking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-11
Updated: 2017-02-11
Packaged: 2018-09-23 14:46:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9661970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whichstiel/pseuds/whichstiel
Summary: Sheriff Donna Hanscum investigates reports of a haunting at an abandoned cabin on a remote lake in Minnesota. What should be a simple salt and burn turns out to be something far more dangerous. A full moon, a resident werewolf, and a cranky ghost make Donna’s first solo hunt a memorable one. Can Donna survive until sunrise?





	

**Author's Note:**

> Part of the [Wayward Daughters Femslash Big Bang](http://wdfemslashbigbang.tumblr.com/) challenge.

"Aw, heck," Donna Hanscum gasped as she shoved through the tangled underbrush. Branches snagged at her backpack and dug into her skin. She stumbled, feet jolting into the dips and whorls formed by roots and rocks on the forest floor. Her lungs burned - half with exertion and half panic. Behind her she could hear wood cracking loud as thunder and she knew her head start was over. Donna redoubled her efforts. If she could just get back to her boat she could jump in, cut the line, and get the heck off the island. Her first solo hunt was turning into a real skunk of a time. Her pursuer snapped its way through the honeysuckle thickets behind her and she pushed onward. Just beyond, water glimmered in the moonlight.  _ Almost there. _

And then the crashing crescendoed just behind her and stopped. Donna, so close to the water but now impossibly far, let out a slow shaky breath, neck prickling. She pulled her sidearm from the sheath at her hip and swiveled with her teeth bared in an aggressive smile. "Okay," she said in a voice so steady it surprised her. "Let's do this."  
  


**Two hours earlier**

Donna's kayak slid into the soft muck at the edge of the island. Dover Lake was wide, but shallow and grassy - a combination that made it a horrible place to visit in the middle of a Minnesota summer. She was counting on that to keep curious visitors away during her own trip to the island. The moldy scent of algae choked the air even out on the open water and a cloud of mosquitoes hummed around the foul cloud of bug spray she'd coated onto her skin and clothing. Like any native Minnesotan, she ignored whatever mosquitoes proved hardy enough to fly past the Deet she doused herself in and balanced her paddle along the bow. She took a deep, steadying breath then nodded her head once. “Hokay,” she said. “I can do this.”

Donna slung one leg over the side of the kayak and slid out of the shallow seat into calf-deep water and sludge. She waded to the rope at the nose of the boat and tied it to an exposed root that arched down from the steeply cut bank into the water. Satisfied that the boat would hold, she stowed her paddle more securely and flipped open the storage net to the rear of the seat. She pulled out a small tactical backpack filled with salt, chalk, a flashlight, an extra knife, lighter fluid, EMF reader, a folding shovel, and extra salt rounds for the sawed off shotgun she'd held between her knees as she paddled over to the island. She checked the weapons she'd already strapped onto her camouflaged hunting pants and vest, grabbed the shotgun from where it rested in the shallow seat, and pulled herself up the eroded shoreline to stand on the island.

As she pulled on her socks and boots she looked around her, working to get her bearings. The island in the middle of Dover Lake was small, hopelessly overgrown, and - most importantly - the site of supposedly haunted ruins. Strange lights, noises, and (as one all-caps internet user had put it) the 'oppressive feeling of being watched' had assailed nocturnal visitors for many years. It was the sort of case that, prior to her exposure to the supernatural world, wouldn't have even been called a case, much less something she scheduled vacation time to investigate.

She looked around the close woods. Though the full moon shone bright in the sky, it was dark under the dense canopy of maple and rampant honeysuckle. Donna pulled the flashlight from her bag, switched it on, and started to cut across the island in the general direction of the abandoned house she had identified in aerial photos of the island.

It took her a few tries to find the house. The maps she worked from were old and the clearing containing the cabin could barely be called that anymore. Now it was densely grown in by a weedy thicket of young trees. Donna grinned as her flashlight caught the edges of the house. She set down her backpack and pulled out her EMF scanner with all the excitement of a kid with a new toy. “Okay, little guy. Time to get to work.” Slinging the backpack over her shoulders, she pushed the EMF into an oversized pocket of her vest. She frowned at the largely silent device which displayed a single lackadaisical LED. “Hope I’m not out here donatin’ blood for no reason,” she muttered.

She gripped the flashlight in one hand and the sawed off in another and advanced on the house. Her heart thumped in her chest in a wonderful mix of anticipation and fear. Her job as Sheriff was incredibly rewarding, but it meant that her role in the law enforcement machine too often centered on paperwork and supervision. She missed being the boots on the ground. The hair on her arms rose up as she approached the building.

The cabin stood two levels tall with boarded up windows on each of the upper and lower stories forming a grimace in the odd shadows cast by the full moon. There was just one door set in the middle of the sagging front porch. The house was smaller than she’d expected from the amateur ghost hunter accounts she’d dredged up online. “Well, heck. You could practically fit this cabin in my living room,” she said as she ran her flashlight over the weathered exterior. She paced around it, checking for gaps in the worn wooden siding and boarded up windows.

Donna tapped at the quiet EMF in her pocket. Dean and Jody had been vague in their instructive texts about ghosts and the range of a spirit. If the cabin was haunted, did that extend to the whole island? Could her target be off on a ghostly hike right now? “Calling all ghosties,” she crooned. Cricket song filled the woods, but nothing else replied.

“Okeydokes.” She shook her head, trying to ignore the feeling that she’d come all this way for nothing. “Dig up the grave first, then search the house.” The house was supposedly built by a trapper for his lady love. After they moved in she slowly went mad and refused to leave the island - even in death. She was reportedly buried behind the house under a simple stone grave marker. From the story online, the ghost should be attached to the cabin, or the nearby gravesite.

Donna pursed her lips when she looked behind the cabin. If there was a gravesite out there, years of unrestricted plant growth was about to make her job much more difficult. “Well, ain’t that a kick in the pants,” she said with a sigh. “Nobody ever took a picture of this mess.” She began to push her way through the brush, training her flashlight on the ground looking for stones large enough to mark a grave.

Suddenly a large thud, like a sledgehammer against a wall, split the night. Donna whirled around with her shotgun raised. The EMF in her pocket began to squawk and her eyes lit up. “Here ghostie, ghostie,” Donna crooned and she stalked back towards the house, the hunt for the headstone temporarily forgotten. She approached the porch carefully and tried the door.

The knob turned easily but the door wouldn’t give way as she gently pushed, then set a shoulder against it and shoved hard. She stepped back and examined the boarded up windows on either side of the door. Donna hummed in satisfaction when she noticed a gap in one of them. “When the Lord closes a door,” she muttered, setting down the shotgun, clenching the flashlight in her teeth, and gripping the loose board tight with both hands. She rocked the board back and forth until the nails holding it onto the window gave way with a loud creak. Donna stumbled forward, forearms pushing into the cabin. Watching her hands disappear, even momentarily, into the dark depths of a haunted cabin was the stuff of childhood nightmares. Donna snatched her arms back out of the hole she’d made, heart thumping. “Hokay,” she laughed a little hysterically. “Next time bring a crowbar.”

She set to work on the rest of the barricade until she made a space large enough for her to fit through. Donna hesitated for a moment with her hand trembling ever so slightly on the windowsill, thinking about what she might encounter inside. She was reminded of a deer hunt from her youth and the fear and wonder she’d felt finding fresh cougar tracks crossing her own. She let herself shiver, and then steeled herself to enter the cabin.

Donna dropped her backpack through first, knocked out a few remnant shards of glass from the base of the window opening, and climbed in. The room was small with shredded tar paper dangling in patches like loose skin on the spartan plank walls. Along one side ran a set of stairs so steep and narrow they almost formed a ladder. The stairs led to a closed hatch. In the beam of her flashlight, dust drifted lazily from the ceiling in floorboard straight rows. She turned her light to the front door and saw that it was boarded shut from the inside. “What the cuss?” she muttered. Donna stole a glance at the window she’d just broken into and heaved a small sigh at the reassuring opening.

Despite the dust motes in the air, the cabin smelled surprisingly clean. Donna had been in plenty of abandoned houses of even a few years where the dust and mold had rendered the air practically unbreathable. Not only did this cabin seem livable, it looked lived in. A bounty of canned food and jugs of bottled water lined one wall. A banana yellow electric generator squatted in the middle of the room next to a sleeping bag, duffle, and pillow. She took a few steps and knelt, swiping a finger along the rumpled sleeping bag. “No dust here,” she murmured.

The EMF reader had continued its low squeal of alert and she pulled it out, switching it off. In the sudden stillness something slid against the upper floor like the quiet sweep of a broom. Donna stood in the silence, letting her senses acclimate to the cabin, trying to pinpoint the source of the noise. After a few minutes of breathless waiting, she shone her flashlight around the room again, lingering on the stairs leading up to the loft.

“Up we go,” she mouthed noiselessly and crossed the room to the foot of the stairs. Half blocking the way was a small green cooler. She crouched and slid a fingertip under the lid curious to see if it was actually storing any food and steeling herself for a cloud of green and black mold. Instead she was immediately hit with the stench of blood. Raw meat shone ruby red and she grimaced, then peered at it to try to identify the body part - and whether it was animal or human. Above her, something snarled. Donna dropped the lid on the cooler and narrowed her eyes at the ceiling. She might be new to hunting, but she’d bet her best gun that wasn't a ghost.

Donna unsnapped her sidearm holster, gripped the shotgun with both hands, flashlight pressed against the barrel and trained forward, and advanced. Dust sifted from the ceiling as footsteps began to creak along the upper floor. Somebody was upstairs alright, and judging by their sudden activity, they’d given up the pretense that the cabin was empty.

“Hello?” Donna called, hoping that the unauthorized occupant upstairs was human and thus, a little closer to her realm of expertise. She crept towards the staircase. “Hiya? Anyone up there? Hey, I’m just here to talk. Are you okay up there?”  _ Are you alive? Or dead? _ She took another steadying breath and set a foot on the bottom stair.

The room plunged in temperature and the swift shift to freezing cold stung her nose as she exhaled in surprise. A cup thwacked her in the head and bounced along the floor and Donna whipped her attention from the stairs to survey the room. She watched as the plastic cup rolled under the stairs. “What the-” And then the barrage hit. A plate smashed above her head and spoons thunked against her backpack and shoulders like little missiles. Donna, whirled, one hand off the shotgun to shield her eyes as she ran for the only cover in the room - the back of the stairs.

Donna pressed herself into the triangular cove under the stairs as canned food began to  _ thunk _ into the wooden steps and wall around her. She flinched as the cans struck ever closer to her face but kept her gaze and shotgun trained on the room. In the half light filtering into the busted out window, she saw it. At first it was just a vague shadow pressing against the moonlight but it didn’t take long for the presence to sharpen into a humanoid shape crackling with gray light. As soon as she had somewhere to aim Donna shot at it and hit it squarely where its chest should be. Wind howled in the windless room and the apparition disappeared.

The cabin was once again utterly still so Donna made a run for the window. She needed to find that grave fast or get the heck away from the cabin until she could call in some backup. Her fingers had just curled around the window ledge when she was torn from the window and thrown across the room. Getting flung into the wall knocked her breath from her and for a moment she lay on her side gaping like a fish. She felt invisible hands grasp her again and Donna hurtled towards the opposite wall. She wrapped her arms around her and tried to spin as she tore across the floor. Her legs caught the wall, bracing her slide and she looked up to see the apparition again.

Staring her down was a woman in a modestly cut, ankle length dress, her face contorted with rage. Her feet hovered several inches off the floor. “Get out,” she howled in a voice like a windstorm.

Donna felt claws of electricity wrap around her again and knew she was about to go on another head injury inducing ride across the room. “Stuff you,” Donna snarled as she rolled to face the ghost. She spat blood from her mouth. “You’re messing with the wrong Sheriff.” She fired at the apparition again and it disappeared. Papers fluttered to the floor and the room, for a moment, was silent.

And then above her, something howled long and slow and full of rage. The hatch to the upper floor began to rattle as though someone inside desperately tried to escape. Donna looked at her salt-loaded shotgun and back up at the rattling hatch. “That can’t be the ghost,” she panted as she pushed herself upright once again. “Who’s up there?” She suspected that she didn’t have the firepower for whatever was up there and the ghost combined. Odd, she thought as she scrambled for the open window, how suddenly easy hunting a ghost sounded.

Donna wriggled through the window, falling gracelessly to the porch, before stumbling upright. Under the stark light of the moon she raced for the shoreline and her boat. She’d have to come back with reinforcements another time. For now, she’d focus on surviving the night. Behind her the woods echoed with howls as long and high as a wolf.

Donna almost made it to the water before the creature caught up to her. She could just make out the tip of her boat where it bobbed in the water when a spray of broken twigs pattered across her back and neck like weak buckshot as the beast plummeted through the last thicket to reach her. It was so close that its howl vibrated through her skin and Donna stopped in her tracks and turned with her pistol in hand, ready to face the new threat. "Okay," she said in a voice so steady it surprised her. "Let's do this."

Donna expected the beast to tower over her so the first thing she had to do was adjust her gaze - and aim - downward several inches. The monster stood just barely above Donna’s own head, lean and lanky to the point of looking half starved. Its eyes burning into her and its wolf-like snout curled into a snarl.

“Ufta,” Donna said, mustering all the bravado at her disposal. “Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes?” The creature took a looming step forward and Donna released the safety on her gun. “Stand back,” she said. “I’m warning you.” The creature’s eyes narrowed into fathomless slits and every instinct told Donna she was a hair’s breadth away from getting shredded. Her finger curled around the trigger and she narrowed her own eyes. She’d take out a good chunk of it before she died.

An angry mohawk of fur bristled from the monster’s nose to the ridge of its forehead and its front claws twitched as though it was about to attack. It lifted its head to howl once more and the sound had barely begun before it stopped abruptly. The monster’s gaze fixed over Donna’s shoulder and ever so slowly, the hackles of fur began to drift down to silky smoothness. A low whine ripped from its throat and it took one stumbling step backwards, then another until it stood in a spotlight of moonlight.

“Well,” said Donna, completely flummoxed. “That’s… that’s right.” She watched as the creature swayed in place, gaze fixed over Donna’s shoulder. Donna lowered her weapon a few inches as the creature stared at the water behind her with what she could now see were disconcertingly human eyes. She risked a quick glance behind her just to make sure there wasn’t another monster - or ghost - penning her in. Moonlight glimmered off the brackish water like a spotlight. The creature whined again, a deep agonized whine of an injured animal, and clawed at something around its waist until a string stood out from its fur. It snapped the string and tossed a bundle at Donna’s feet.

Slowly, not moving her eyes from the beast, Donna bent to pick it up. It was a sheath and within it, a knife. She pulled out the blade and it gleamed black and silver as she rotated it in the light. She ran a hand over the smooth metal as her mind tumbled over the new facts and raced through the lore she’d been given. “You’re a werewolf, aren’t ya?” The creature whined like a plaintive child. She gripped the knife in her hand and held it out, half in display and half defensively. “And this is silver.”

The werewolf settled onto its haunches and looked at her for a long moment. Then it sighed, a long, loud exhale through its nose like an exhausted dog. It closed its eyes and thrust out its chest, pinning its arms to its sides. Donna’s fingers tightened on the hilt for a moment. The werewolf sat still, eyes closed, chest moving in and out rapidly. Its silky fur rippled with every breath. Donna didn’t know how long she stared at the beast until finally she said, “No.”

The werewolf opened its eyes slowly, one at a time.

“No, I don’t got a reason to kill ya.” Donna repeated softly.

For a moment they just stared at each other, an orchestra of frogs the only sound in the woods. Then the beast snarled and leapt at her. Its claws flashed like daggers in the moonlight and for just a moment Donna found herself gripping the knife and angling it towards the creature’s heart. And then she dropped it, and dropped to her knees, throwing her arms over her head. She waited for seconds that felt like minutes, dreading the moment claws ripped into her skin, proving her wrong.

The creature skidded to a stop around her, feet kicking up a cloud of dust and leaf litter with the force of its landing. Donna could feel the heat rolling off of its skin, it was so close. And then it whined again and backed away. Donna lifted her head and watched it as it stumbled towards the shoreline.

The werewolf lifted its head, pointed its snout towards the moon, and howled and howled. Shaking all over with adrenaline, Donna settled to her knees and watched the monster crouch down on its haunches at the edge of the water, its howls filling the night. Finally, Donna understood the sound for what it was: weeping.  
  


**The Next Morning**

Donna had always had a pragmatic view of law enforcement. She knew she wasn’t some knight sweeping in on a charger to save people. People’s lives were more complicated than that. She wanted desperately to untangle the mystery of the werewolf, boarded up against the full moon, or the real haunted cabin she’d just explored. She had a million questions. Instead, Donna knelt on the forest floor, the knife tangled in the undergrowth at her feet, and didn’t dare move beyond shifting to a more comfortable position as she watched the werewolf mourn and wail until the sky turned rose pink.

As the sun rose the mournful crooning turned to agonized yelps. Bones snapped and fur receded and in less than five minutes, a young woman crouched at the shoreline. Donna stared with her mouth open for a few minutes, astounded that such a force of nature could transmute into the slight, blond woman rocking slightly by the water.

Donna stood carefully and approached the young woman as if she were a wild animal. Donna supposed she was, or still might be. Carefully, she dropped her backpack, removed her vest, slipped out of her button down, then zipped her vest up again. She approached from the side hoping that the woman could see her in her peripheral vision. The last thing she needed was a startled werewolf even if the claws were currently nonexistent. She held out her shirt. “Hiya,” Donna said gently. “Never met a werewolf before.”

The woman sniffled but didn’t look up. “Why didn’t you kill me?”

“I’m a cop,” Donna said. “It’s not the first time someone’s tried to hurt themselves at the end of my weapon. I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t try to save you from yourself.”

“Yeah, well.” The blond woman dragged both hands up to her face and ground them into her cheeks. “I’m not worth saving.”

“Aw, hey now,” Donna said. She leaned forward a little and when the woman didn’t move, gently draped the shirt over her shoulders. She stepped back and sat down out of arm’s reach but still in view. She crossed her legs and laced her fingers in her lap, away from her weapons. “Everyone is worth saving.”

The woman turned a deep scowl on her. “You don’t know me. You don’t know what I’ve done. What I could do.”

“Geez, hon, that’s a heavy load. Wanna talk about it?”

“No.” The sun rose over the trees and the sky brightened to a clear, hopeful blue before the woman spoke again. “That knife. I tie it on at every full moon. I carry it with me. It’s...it’s not just a failsafe if I try to kill someone. It’s a reminder.” She started to play with a bracelet on her arm, shuttling it through her fingers like prayer beads on a rosary. She shook her head again and let out a long, slow exhale. “You should have killed me.”

“You may have done something real bad, I don’t know,” Donna conceded. “But I do know that you didn’t kill me. And you coulda.”

The woman sniffled. “Well, if you didn’t come to this island to kill me then why are you here?”

Donna laughed softly. “Sounds a little odd but seeing as how you were just a werewolf... I was huntin’ a ghost.”

Kate snuffled out a laugh. “Yeah, well, there’s one of those here too.” She shook her head. “Crazy as it sounds.”

“Yah, it’s a bit wackadoo. What’s your name?”

To Donna’s surprise, the woman extended her hand and a blush painted her cheeks. “Sorry. I’m Kate.”

Donna took it, “Donna.”

“You’re a cop?”

“Darn tootin’. Goin’ on 20 years now.”

“And you hunt? Hunt...monsters?”

Kate shivered and Donna clucked her tongue and ducked the question. “Why don’t we get you some decent clothes? I’m assuming that duffel I saw in the cabin was yours?”

Kate nodded and stood, clutching Donna’s shirt to her. She hesitated, then turned towards the woods and began to walk in the direction of the cabin. After a few steps she knelt and grabbed the empty sheath lying on the ground, then put the knife back into its case, the metal hissing against her skin. Donna followed her back through the woods, retracing the violent path they taken in the middle of the night.

“You’re out here on your own?” Donna said, more statement than question.

“When I’m a werewolf everything is stronger. What I feel. The things I want.” Kate looked back over her shoulder towards the woods as though she could see past the trees to the water. “The things I fear.” She looked at the cabin. “I heard about this place, this abandoned cabin on an island out in the middle of nowhere. I just knew I’d be safe, people would be safe if I could be on an island with nobody around. I could transform with the moon, leave the island when I had to, when I was human. When I’m a werewolf I’m just-” she laughed. “It sounds dumb. But I’m afraid of water normally. When I’m transformed I’m fucking terrified of it. It keeps me contained. It protects people from me.”

“Hmm. The water protects people from you.” Donna nodded. “Interesting. Only-”

Kate’s shoulders squared. “Only what?”

“There wasn’t any water between you and me last night.” She stared hard at Kate, wondering at the gaps in her story. ”Just...think on it.”

Kate was silent as they trudged the rest of the way to the cabin. She paused at the porch and looked inside. The door had been ripped off its hinges, the wooden planks boarded across it strewn across the porch and in the entrance. She started to walk inside when Donna grabbed her arm.

“Wait, that ghost-”

Kate shook her head and tugged her arm from Donna’s grasp. “I don’t think she liked you,” she said as her voice was swallowed by the cabin. “She’s been nice to me.”

Donna followed to find Kate looking in dismay around the main room. It was an absolute mess, a wreck of clothing, broken dishes, and torn fabric.

“Well, she  _ was _ nice to me.”

“Don’t you worry a lick, hon,” Donna said. “We’ll get this cleaned up. Ah, is your  _ friend  _ due back?”

Kate snorted and found her duffle bag in a rumpled lump under the stairs. “I have no idea. I’ve only seen her a few times and she’s never-” She gestured around. “She’s never done this before.” She pulled out clothes and cleared her throat uncomfortably. “So you’re here to hunt her?”

Donna felt herself redden at that, it sounded so mercenary. It  _ was _ so mercenary, she supposed. “Sometimes when people die, their souls stay behind. They get trapped on this world instead of moving on. Most spirits go mad in time. Ya know, looking back...I wonder if she was defending you from me. She only attacked when I got close to the stairs.”

“She’s got a funny way of defending me.” Kate had pulled on clean clothes but she held up a jacket, now soiled with ground-in animal heart. Her eyes flashed yellow with the meat near her face and she dropped it. “Damn it.”

“Well, it’s nothing against you, Kate. Ghosts lose their sense. It's easy for them to hurt the living.” She looked at Kate closely. “She might hurt you one day. You could help me, you know.”

Kate narrowed her eyes, stacking cans back against the wall. “With what?”

“Puttin’ her to rest. Help her pass through the veil.”

Kate kicked at the floor, frowning. “How?”

“Well, you can help me find the grave, for a start.” Donna jerked her thumb towards the back wall. “I couldn’t find the site in the dark.”

Kate looked thoughtful for a moment and more composed now that she was clothed, as though wearing clothes made her feel more human than animal. “Would she go to Heaven?”

“Don’t know squat about that,” Donna said. “But this will give her a chance.”

”Hmm,” she said after a very long silence. “I know where it is. I’ll help you. For- for her. So she has a chance.” Kate led the way outside. Now that the sun was fully up the warmth of summer saturated Donna's skin even through the shaded canopy by the cabin. Cicadas buzzed in the trees. Kate led the way past a tangle of honeysuckle and back to a little patch of mossy ground dotted with violets. Half buried in the ground lay a flat tombstone with a roughly hewn EMILY etched on its surface. Kate scrubbed at some moss growing over the tombstone with her toe. “So what happens now?”

Donna dropped her backpack at the edge of the stone and, keeping her tone matter-of-fact said, “I dig it up.”

At first Kate was quiet as she watched Donna dig, her arms wrapped around her knees. But slowly Kate opened up and her words grew freer, almost giddy. Donna wondered just how long she'd been alone. She was knee deep in the grave when Kate laughed suddenly. “You know, it sounds like a bad TV show. A ghost and a werewolf living together. All that’s missing is a vampire right?”

Donna swiped mud and sweat from her brow. “I’m sure there’re stranger things out there.”

“My sister used to watch a show like that.”

“Sister?”

Kate shrugged. “She died.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Donna dug quietly.

“I killed her.”

Donna stopped digging, her head dipped low, eyes on the shovel, feeling like they were balanced on the precipice of something big.

“I turned her to be like me. I'd meant to save--” Kate shook her head. “But she started killing. So I killed her.” She sniffled and then curled into a tight ball of misery, rocking in the violets and the mud.

Donna scrambled out of the grave and pulled Kate close. She didn’t know how long they stayed like that until Kate spoke again.

“Every full moon,” Kate whispered. “When I’m boarding up the house I think. Yeah. This is the night. Just end it. Just do it. Why waste my time with the boards, right? It’s only a matter of time before someone comes here.” Her voice cracked in a sob. “I mean, you did.”

“Hey. Hey. Alright.” Donna rocked her. “I can’t imagine how you must feel. But ending it? That’s not the way.” She shushed her like a child. “That’s not the way.” They stayed like that for a long while until Kate’s sobs subsided and Donna felt her stiffen and begin to pull away. She let her go and slipped back into the hole. There was still a job to do. The tug and scuff of the shovel against dirt and root filled the air once more and Donna didn’t look up from her task again until Kate gasped.

“She’s there.” Kate pointed at the cabin where Emily’s apparition floated inches above the ground. The spirit’s face appeared to be calm. She stared at Donna, who set her shovel into the dirt, ready to climb out and defend Kate if the need arose. The shovel hit something hard and, jabbing the blade around her feet, she outlined the edges of a half rotted coffin.

Donna broke through the old wood and the spirit didn’t move, wafting amongst the trees at the edge of the cabin as though out for a Sunday stroll. Donna pulled out salt, lighter fluid, and matches. She poured salt over the uncovered remains and offered the lighter fluid to Kate. “Pour it over the salt,” she instructed, gently. Kate almost mechanically grabbed it, pouring it into the grave, and Donna lit a match and dropped it into the grave. Tears slipping silently down her cheeks, Kate watched as fire carried Emily’s spirit beyond the veil.

Kate stood for a while, looking at the now empty space along the cabin wall. She scrubbed dirty hands under each eye, smearing her face into a mess of mud and tears. “So that’s it.” Her voice was low.

“Looks to be. Hey,” Donna said gently after she had stowed the shovel back in her bag. “Your life hasn’t been a cream pie. But you don’t have to be alone,” Donna offered. “I can help you.”

Kate shook her head. “It’s better if I stay here,” she said.

Donna looked on her sadly. She just knew that in a few days Kate would be gone. If she couldn’t reach her now… “Maybe I could-”

“Please go,” Kate said a little more sharply. She turned towards the cabin and then swiveled back. “And thanks for...for not killing me.”

Donna watched Kate’s retreat with a feeling of intense helplessness. Maybe she should stay on the island. Surely she’d be able to convince Kate to get some help. Though what kind of help could possibly be available to werewolves… She shook her head, a surge of anger burning under her skin at how desperate the supernatural world was. No hope but death? There had to be a better way. 

Reluctantly, Donna pulled together the last of her supplies and headed back to the lake. At the shore, she took out her phone.  _ Good.  _ She had just enough signal to send some texts. After a flurry of agitated text messages Donna finally had her answer. She smiled to herself. “There’s always a little light if you just look for it,” she said before hiking back towards the cabin. 

She didn’t know if Kate would listen to her, or if this Garth guy Dean told her about could help Kate. But surely knowing that there were other werewolves who'd vowed not to kill - knowing that Kate wouldn't have to be alone? Surely that would be enough to convince Kate to come with her - to convince Kate to allow herself to get help. Donna pushed her way through the woods, hope lighting her up inside as bright as the sunshine above.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I'm on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/whichstiel) and [Tumblr](http://whichstiel.tumblr.com/) @ whichstiel. You may also like the Supernatural recap and gif blog I co-write/curate, [Shirtless Sammy](https://shirtlesssammy.tumblr.com/).


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